With the dream of securing admission to one of the prestigious IIMs of the nation, I started my journey of CAT. As a non-engineer, I heard the prowess of engineers in the Quant and LRDI section of the exam and how difficult it is for a non-engineering guy to secure the 99+ percentile in the exam. I decided not to let these thoughts boggle my mind and started my journey of CAT. I started preparing in June of 2019. I had six months to prepare. I believe six months is a good enough time for preparation for the CAT exam. I started with understanding the pattern of the exam to plan the journey accordingly.
I understood CAT is not a test of concepts but time management, decision-making, and performance under pressure with my primary research. So, I started preparing accordingly. CAT consists of three timed sections, and a person can not toggle between different sections. Hence, they are like three independent exams, one after the other. It helped me to make different preparation strategies for all sections.
For VARC, I relied only on mock exams and a lot of reading. The Hindu editorial page was part of my morning ritual, and my habit of reading books paid me in this section. I gave 10+ sectional tests and 40+ complete mock exams for the preparation for this section.
LRDI section is arguably the most challenging section of the CAT exam, and the correct exam strategy is crucial for scoring well in this section. My approach for this section was to identify the easy sets first and solve them. It helped me prioritize the question I wanted to do and solve the maximum number of questions in 1 hour. I aimed to solve anywhere between 3-5 sets in the exam depending on the difficulty level of the section.
For Quant, I started with the basic concepts and initially solved topic-wise questions. I always tried to identify the easiest way to solve a question. The pitfall in the Quant and LRDI section is falling in love with a particular set of questions and giving it more time than it deserves. Apart from the full mock test, I also gave 20+ sectional tests for preparing the Quant section.
A few do's and don'ts for the CAT exam.
- Do not postpone the mock exam for the last. Don't wait to complete the entire syllabus before appearing for mock exams. As you might find very little time when you start
2. Do analyze each and mock thoroughly. Mock exams gave me the required inputs to make the future preparation strategy.
- 3. Do not try to attempt all questions of the exam. It is impossible to score 100% in the CAT exam. In terms of percentage, my score was less than 60% which fetch me the 99.64 percentile. It would be best if you aimed for a decent accuracy to avoid negative marking
- 4. Do not take the baggage of one section to the other one. Only focus on the present question. You might think your performance was not good enough in the previous section. Still, you can't judge yourself solely based on the number of questions you have attempted, as your percentile is also the function of the difficulty level of the paper.
- 5. Don't let prejudice affect your performance. Irrespective of your educational background, you can crack CAT as it only requires perseverance, practice, and presence of mind.
All the best for all future aspirants who will be appearing in CAT 2022 exam.